Category: First Aid/Medical

The Mass Casualty Incident: Triage, by Amy Alton, A.R.N.P., and Joe Alton, M.D.

The responsibilities of a medic in times of trouble will usually be one-to-one; that is, the healthcare provider will be dealing with one ill or injured individual at a time.  If you have dedicated yourself to medical preparedness, you will have accumulated significant stores of supplies and some knowledge. Therefore, your encounter with any one person should be, with any luck, within your expertise and resources.  There may be a day, however, when you find yourself confronted with a scenario in which multiple people are injured.  This is referred to as a Mass Casualty Incident (MCI). A mass casualty incident …


Sharp Wound Management, by Amy Alton, A.R.N.P. and Joe Alton, M.D.

Given the media outcry against gun ownership, it’s easy to forget the wounds that are caused by knives and other sharp instruments.  Trauma incurred from these injuries may be minor or major; penetrating trauma such as caused by a stab wound should not be discounted as a major injury; it can be life-threatening, depending on the organs and blood vessels damaged.  Penetrating trauma is divided into perforating and non-perforating.  A perforating wound is one in which the object causing the damage goes into one side of the body and then exits through the other side.  A wound from .223 or …


Medical Notes from Nicaraguan Villages, by COEMT

Here are some insights that I gained from a recent week-long medical mission trip to Nicaragua. We treated hundreds of men, women, and children living in remote villages for general medical complaints.  I envision these conditions as being similar to what many of us would see in TEOTWAWKI. Living conditions: Mostly, the men in these villages are subsistence farmers, picking coffee beans, or something similar.  The women stay at home and take care of the children, grandparents, and animals – chickens and pigs.  Their average income is very low, in the 10’s of dollars per month. Their houses are really shacks …


Seventeen and Prepping, by Michael on the East Coast

Greetings, my fellow SurvivalBlog readers! My name is Michael, and I am seventeen years old. I live somewhere on the East Coast of the United States of America with my mother and father. To the rest of the world, I appear a normal teenage boy: Glued to my iPad, where I read SurvivalBlog each night before bed, obsessed with both new and old music, and always quoting music lyrics, movies and television shows with my friends. Yet what both the majority my friends and society do not know is for the last year I have been preparing for The End …


Letter Re: Sugardyne for Wound Treatment

Hi James, I’m sure you’ve heard of this–but on the off chance you haven’t, you definitely need to: The miraculous wound-healing benefits of a goop made from sugar and betadine (povidone iodine–available cheaply everywhere). You mix together and make a paste, which can be packed into deep wounds and gouges. Some people refer to it as “sugardine.” Not everyone knows that sugar alone has been used for hundreds of years as an effective gunshot wound treatment. The high osmotic gradient it promotes attracts and traps bacteria–and animal cells are better able to withstand high osmotic conditions than bacterial cells. The …


Prepping Saved My Dog’s Life, by L. Joseph Mountain

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Suddenly all chaos broke loose. For a second it sounded like an unknown dog had got inside the fence. I grabbed my staff and was out the door before anyone else could react. I was briefly reassured to see the fence was holding an unknown pit bull out but my pit bull was in full war mode. They were in fact fighting, trying to fight through the fence. Given enough time they would get through it, over it or under it. The hose was called for. Moving quickly but carefully I unwind some hose and return to see the Sheltie …


Surviving the Aftermath, Hurricane Katrina Style, by Frank G.

On the morning of August 29th, 2005 we came face to face with TEOTWAWKI in the form of Hurricane Katrina.  An estimated 92% of our community in Pascagoula, Mississippi was inundated with a storm surge of 20-30 feet and 30-55 feet sea waves.  The surge waters traveled well inland, between 6-12 miles and combined with freshwater flooding from our numerous creeks, rivers, and the runoff from the Mobile, Alabama reservoir that opened its flood gates to relieve stress on the dam.  This basically cut Jackson County in half.  Fortunately the worst of the storm hit in the morning just as …


Three Letters Re: Bad as a Bullet: Tick and Mosquito-Borne Diseases

James:  I live in Tennessee where mosquitoes, chiggers, and ticks thrive.  There are two wet weather ponds near my home and if I go to my shooting range in the evening or early morning, the mosquitoes will make any quality time really miserable.  While working in the gardens and fields, one has to be constantly checking themselves for ticks.   Last year about April I read a short paragraph in Countryside Magazine from a gentleman (I believe from Maine) that has taken a Vitamin B1 tablet starting in April and takes them every day until the first killing frost in the Fall for the past …


Bad as a Bullet: Tick and Mosquito-Borne Diseases, by D.K., DVM

We have SCUBA friends from Canada who do a lot of camping, and one year the wife came down with a debilitating illness that put her out of work for many months.  The medical system there did not make it easy to consult a specialist, especially one familiar with arthropod-borne diseases.  She showed all the symptoms of Lyme disease, including weakness, fever, sore joints, lethargy, headaches, and muscle aches.  Plus she had been exposed to ticks while camping.  She suffered for over a year before she slowly recovered.  Though it was never confirmed to be a tick-borne illness, odds are …


Letter Re: When Bugging Out is Not an Option: Hunkering Down with a Quadriplegic

JWR: I was contemplating writing an article for the current round of your competition, but after reading the “hunkering down with a quadriplegic” bit, I don’t think I’ll bother. I’d personally vote for his to win. I have a cousin who at 17 was paralyzed from the neck down. Now, 20-odd years later, I’m an EMT and I frequently see people (whether grievously injured or not) who must be removed inert and intact from a house that is near-complete inaccessible in its normal condition. Just last night I had to deal with a situation like this — hauling someone out …


When Bugging Out is Not an Option: Hunkering Down with a Quadriplegic, by Steven in Alabama

I’ve always considered myself and my family extremely blessed.  I also am a firm believer that God expects you to make the most out of what you have.  God gave me a wonderful wife and 3 healthy, strong boys.  We are a hard working family who have always had goals and planned well for the future.  We even had a bug-out plan when not many other folks even talked about such things.  Our world took a drastic turn a little over a year ago when my oldest son was injured in a high school wrestling accident.  In the blink of …


The Newest Mutant, The H7N9 Virus: Could it Be Headed to a Country Near You?, by Doctor’s Wife

H7N9: What should I do? As of the recent date of writing this article, the CDC does not have any new or special recommendations for the U.S. public at this time regarding H7N9. There is currently no vaccine to prevent H7N9. CDC will keep you updated. If you live outside of the U.S., search the WHO web site often. Stay informed. Since H7N9 is not spreading easily from person to person at this time, CDC does not recommend that people delay or cancel trips to China. The World Health Organization also is watching this situation closely and does not recommend …


On Diabetes, and Thinking Outside the Box, by Dr. Cynthia J. Koelker

A thoughtful EMT wrote me to ask: Dr. Koelker: What effect could you have on blood sugar for a diabetic (type 1) through blood transfusions? I am a paramedic, and our field treatment for high blood sugar is IV fluids until the hospital can give them insulin to lower the blood sugar. In a SHTF scenario, there is no hospital. The thought process got me thinking though….My questions are these: 1) What, if any effect could you have on lowering blood sugar through transfusions? i.e., basically finding a non-diabetic donor match, and swapping a couple pints of blood…the non-diabetic can …


How Will We Deal with Five Epidemics at TEOTWAWKI?, by Philip J. Goscienski, M.D.

In One Second After, William Forstchen describes a cataclysmic scenario, a widespread EMP effect that is only slightly less devastating than nuclear near-annihilation. The protagonists in JWR‘s novel Patriots fare better temporarily because the physical infrastructure remains relatively intact for a few weeks after the nation’s economic collapse. In either scenario the five epidemics that are already under way in the United States give new relevance to TEOTWAWKI. Epidemic (from the Greek: among the people): prevalent and spreading rapidly among many individuals within a community at the same time; widespread. The five epidemics:             Obesity             Type 2 diabetes             …


Letter Re: A New Pandemic Threat On the Horizon: H7N9

Dear Editor, I am an emergency physician practicing in Southern Californistan. I share TXNurse’s concern about influenza in general, and especially new variants of Avian Influenza, like H7N9.   Her information is current and valuable.  I would urge standard OPSEC on this information if you are a nurse or physician or other health worker. Many of my colleagues pooh-pooh my concerns about Influenza.  They just don’t believe it.  And these are educated physicians!  Given many of them are liberal and believe FEMA will protect them and all that, but even so you would expect a nod from other physicians about …